​GM possibly embezzling.

I’m 50-60% cash business. About 25% cc and the rest cash or checks. That’s it. Nothing else.

Each seller has a drawer. We close the virtual drawer EOD and tally. Operations manager does the cash count GM signs off and that’s that. Counts always good. Whenever it’s off we figure it out.

Out of left field I suddenly realize the GM has been doing gift card payments. We don’t have gift cards. He’s been posting payments as a gift card so this has me thinking maybe the operations manager is only counting cash posts & not realizing there are gift cards posted. This means the GM could be pocketing the gift card posts and none of us realized because we were only eyes on the cash posts.

Yes our CC was not connected to our site so that was a way to manually input a payment in the past but it’s been 4 months since they’ve integrated payments directly so gift cards should not be used at all. Yet they continue to be used, although at a much lower rate.

I’ve calculated it averaged around 8-12k a week when we had to use gift cards as a cc payment posting method. Once that stopped it I looked at the daily average and weekly and it’s now 300 a day and about 1800 a week. If the GM is stealing then he maybe embezzled about 15k in the past few months.

I contracted my cpa to analyze the bank statements and see if there’s any dip. I looked at it myself but my checks are post dated by some customers so that throws off my totals. I don’t see a discrepancy right now that can’t be explained by that. But I can’t explain why he does this on a daily basis.

If it were cc payments he’s posting then I can’t explain why I can’t find ANY of these posts on my merchant services transactions. So it’s not the ccs like from before. He’s literally either just fucking up really badly when posting & perhaps my operations manager accounts for that but didn’t tell me otherwise I can’t think of anything other than this guy is stealing.

I’m going to count the box tomorrow when I get in. If the 210$ he posted as a gift card is not part of his drawer then I’ll know he’s stealing. If it’s in there then he’s just doing sloppy work. If he’s pocketing the money then I’m going to let it go for the rest of the week and continue to gather evidence.

This is a man I grew up with & he helped me save the business from total foreclosure & ruin to. 3.6m & growing gross annual rev. If he’s stealing I will be absolutely ruthless tho. I don’t care that he worked his ass off. I did too. To steal from me and so brazenly is insane. I plan on contacting the police at the end of the week if it turns out he’s embezzling & I’ll show them the proof in the cash print outs from the money counter as well as the EOD print outs.

Anyone go through this or any advice?

Edit: followed up on yesterday’s drawer, his gift card transaction was never accounted for. 210 missing and I recorded from the camera him receiving the money from the driver. So the money was received it seems like clear cut theft

2nd edit: currently looking behind the scenes for a new GM. It looks damning as hell. The first fraudulent transaction appears to have occurred 2/18/23. It looks like he tested it out then did it again on 2/24 then 2/28 then he picks up steam on 3/6 3/9 3/10 averaging 150 a day.

The more I see these numbers the more I realize how much this man has likely embezzled from me, if 500 days have passed (less with holidays) and he averaged about 150 a day then he stole 75k.

I’m continuing to gather info and I’ll have a complete data set soon from my POS developers.